by Brian Simons
He had never done this before, though he didn’t know why not. From this vantage he could see most of Havenstock. He saw the castle, looming to the north, but he also saw the sprawling farmland in the south, the mansions in the east, and the endless stretch of small shops in the west. As he scanned the horizon, he got a message:
>> Congratulations! You have improved your Surveil ability to 3. Stare at something for 28 seconds to discern additional information. Update: The longer you stare into the distance, the more detail will come into focus from faraway places.
Daniel continued to stare into the horizon. Distant farms became clearer and clearer. He could almost see the crops they were growing in fine detail. It took patience, but it worked. He continued Surveilling until he saw a tall green person in the distance, standing in a cornfield. He focused on the figure until wideset black eyes came into focus on a flat lizard-like head. Daniel had never met Januar before — he doubted the god had ever made an appearance before now — but this had to be him. He climbed back down from the roof.
“It looks like Januar,” Daniel said, “is just a few minutes’ walk south of here.” He started walking that way and then decided, why not tiptoe the whole way?
21
After the Regent rejected their zombie apparel, Coral had received a quest update.
Quest Update: Hemming and Hawing
Your designs were dead on arrival. Nonetheless, the Regent is willing to look past your macabre faux pas and let you try again to create armor that will stand up to Otto’s merciless Soulkeeper Axe.
Requirements: Cunning. Guile. And a sewing kit.
Reward: New Tailoring skill / gold.
She was at a total loss for how to proceed with this quest, but maybe Januar would know what to do. They were all putting an awful lot of stock in this local deity, which made Coral uncomfortable. She had stopped going to church IRL when she was a kid. The idea of praying to something in Travail seemed ludicrous. Just as ludicrous as stitching together a hundred zombies to make a swamp witch a new fence? Maybe it couldn’t hurt to play along with this Januar stuff. In for a penny, in for a pound!
The gang stalked south, with Daniel in the lead, scoping around corners to make sure Otto wasn’t on the prowl. When they approached the farmlands to the south, they saw a giant of a man with dark green skin. He had broad shoulders and a thick torso supported by legs as wide as old tree trunks. Coral guessed that he was four stories tall.
“Excuse me,” Daniel called out. “We’ve heard that Januar was visiting Havenstock. Is that you?”
The green giant nodded. Flakes of dry skin were peeling from the top of his head, his long sloping back, and all the way down his tail. Several large patches of molted skin sat on the ground at his feet.
“Good,” Daniel said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot like he hadn’t thought this through. Maybe he didn’t know how to address a god.
If Coral were going to step in, she decided to have a little fun with it. “Holy God of Rebirth,” she shouted, “we seek your wisdom.” She thought she was off to a pretty good start. “We seek to protect the Regent’s guards from a new scourge that defies your divine plan for endless renewal.” Ok, maybe she was going a little overboard.
“And gold,” Sybil yelled.
“And a better understanding of our own paths,” Daniel said.
“And to hang out with our friends some more!” added Sal.
Januar looked at each of them in turn. Then he spoke, with a deep low voice that tumbled like a clothes dryer full of large rocks. His voice shook the earth beneath them and rumbled their bones.
“There is a cave north of the city. Deep in the Hiber Woods. May you grasp what you find.”
Helpful, but a little cryptic at the end. “Thank you, Benevolent God of New Beginnings!” Coral yelled.
“Please,” he boomed, “just call me Januar.”
“Ok. Thanks, Januar,” Coral said. She knew she had pushed it a little too far. Oh well.
“Why do you stay for only five minutes at a time?” Daniel asked.
Januar turned his head to look out into the distance. “I have tended to many souls who cannot be reborn because an evil is sweeping Havenstock. I want to understand this evil. But I have a job to do, and the souls I tend to are strewn far and wide. I must tend to those who have not fallen prey to this evil and return them to new life.”
While the god’s head was turned, Coral picked up a sheet of the god’s discarded skin and stuffed it into her bag. One thing she was learning about games like Travail was that you took every item you could find in case it was valuable.
“Maybe we could ask for a blessing before we leave?” Sal said to Daniel.
Sal looked surprised when Januar turned his head toward Sal and responded directly to him. “You have been blessed with knowledge more powerful than any benediction. Visit the cave of which I spoke.”
“Yes, sir, Januar!” Sal replied.
***
The group made one stop inside the city before heading to the forest. They went to the global exchange in Havenstock’s marketplace.
The marketplace was generally full of vendors. Some stalls had potions and herbs, others had ore and blacksmithing gear, others still had rare weapons and armor. Mostly, though, players would ask the clerk to list their goods on the exchange, or to buy goods when they became available.
Daniel walked up to the clerk and introduced him to Coral. “Hello, friend. Let me introduce you to Coral_Darning. Coral, this is Ven Dor.”
She looked at Daniel askance. Ven Dor? Original. “Hello,” she said. “We would like to list our Deathskin Armor on the exchange.”
“Hmmm. Let me see.” He flipped through the pages of a logbook on the stand in front of him, a bead of sweat running from his brow and down his chubby cheek. “Never seen one of these before, which means I’ll bet no one is looking for it. Could take a long time before anyone buys these off you. I recommend listing them for 4 gold apiece.”
Sybil pushed her way to the front. “4,000 gold apiece. Not a coin less.”
“Ok, lady,” Ven Dor said, “but that’ll require a lot of patience. What else ya got?”
“We have 32 frogskins,” Coral said, hoping Sybil hadn’t been keeping count. She had collected 36 total in the marsh, but had plans for the last four.
“Those will go for 2 gold each if I sell them now, or you could ask for more and wait a while.”
“Now, please.” Coral took the 64 gold and handed 50 to Sybil. “That’s for the bow and arrows and my share of the health potions we bought the other day.”
“But we still have those,” Sybil said. “We could just sell them back.”
“Or we could keep them,” Coral said. “I don’t know what’s in that forest.”
She watched Sybil weigh the idea. “Fine,” she said, putting the 50 coins in her coin purse. She turned to Ven Dor. “Would you access my bank account please?”
Ven Dor complied. “Exchange 50 gold coins for cash,” she said.
After a moment Ven Dor looked up from his logbook. “Complete! You have been credited $5. Anything else I can do for you all?”
Coral asked, “How many metal arrows can I get for 14 gold?”
“Seven,” he replied, “or you could offer less gold per arrow and wait to see if anyone accepts.”
“We’re in a bit of a hurry Ven,” she said. “I’ll take the seven.”
Ven handed her the metal arrows. She added them to her quiver. With the 8 arrows she had left after their recent frog battle, she now had a total of 15. Not many for someone whose only form of attack was a bow and arrow.
Ven leaned forward and said to Coral in a hushed voice, “It’s the crazy man with the bloody axe, right? That’s why you’re in a hurry?”
Coral nodded.
Ven whispered, “I heard that the Regent was telling people that you lot were going to kill that guy. Thank you for that! But please hurry. I’m a bit of a sitting duck out here, don’t you thi
nk?”
Coral thanked Ven for the arrows, but wondered what he was even talking about. The Regent hadn’t charged them with killing Otto, only finding a new type of armor. Maybe there was a new quest to unlock after they finished this one? Or maybe they were being set up.
“What was he saying?” Sal asked.
“Nothing, just thanking us for our business,” she said. They walked carefully through the city again but still saw no sign of Otto. They exited the city in the west just past the shops, most of which seemed unoccupied. Or at least the doors were closed tight and the lights were all off. Any players logging into Travail now for the first time would have a tough time getting started. And then Otto would probably sink an axe into their back.
With the city behind them, they turned north. The forest still loomed in the distance.
“Is the forest still part of Havenstock?” Coral asked.
“No,” Daniel answered, “the Hiber Woods is its own area. It’s named after Hiber Mountain which is further north, the same way the Havenstock Wetlands are named after Havenstock. Not part of the city, but close enough to be associated with it on a map.
“There may be NPCs that live out in the woods, but it’s mostly just mobs. The NPCs up that way are mostly in a city called Hiber Camp, up on Hiber Mountain. There’s another forest far away from here but it’s full of elves, so it’s a very different setup.”
“So there are other cities,” Coral said, starting to process the enormity of Travail. She didn’t realize the other places on her world map could be inhabited. “And other Regents?”
“Regents, Queens, Mayors, it depends on the city. Then there’s the Arena.” Daniel’s eyes lit up when he mentioned the Arena. “That’s where you fight other players. It’s structured so that you don’t really die, and you keep the gear you bring with you. But you bet gold on the outcome, and if you win, you can make a lot of money.”
“Where is that?” she asked.
“Super far south of here, in the Sand Barrens. But it’s tough to get to because everything outside the Arena is a PvP zone. If you’re PK’d out there you will lose all of your gear. Some high level players babysit the Barrens and wait for players to come through so they can player kill them. This forest is fine though, it’s not a PvP zone.”
This was a lot for Coral to take in. Sometimes defeating another player meant actual death, but sometimes not, and it depended on the rules of the far flung parts of this world you traveled to. She hoped she wouldn’t slip up and get herself killed by a player killer.
“How’s your old friend FighterFluid?” Sybil asked.
Daniel seemed to tense up. He looked over at Coral instead of Sybil. “That’s the one player I never beat in the Arena. Not even once. Every time I thought I was ready to take him on, he had some new awesome piece of gear that let him kick my ass all over again.”
“He pays to play,” Sybil explained. “Whatever he does IRL, he has enough money to buy high level gear off the global exchange. He doesn’t have to grind away at levels because he buys items that help him level up much quicker. He doesn’t have to slay ginormous monsters to get legendary weapons, he buys them from players who need to sell those weapons in order to eat. It’s despicable. But people like him are the only reason any of us can make a living at this.”
Daniel’s mood seemed to have shifted immediately at the mention of FighterFluid. Coral decided not to bring up the Arena again.
22
“Sir?” the head programmer at Arbyten, Inc. had knocked three times on the president’s office door, but the president still hadn’t looked away from his monitor.
“For God’s sake, tell me what,” said President Domin Ansel.
“We have a strange error report coming out of Philadelphia. Players aren’t reincarnating, which means they can’t log back in and keep playing.”
This got Domin’s attention. “How many players?”
“So far, 2,136 players have failed to reincarnate.”
Domin furrowed his brow. “What’s the upshot?”
“The upshot, sir, is that we would have to take the server offline to analyze what’s going wrong.”
“Absolutely not. What’s your name?”
“Hector Pérez, sir.”
“Hector Pérez, that was a dumb idea. If we take the server down we have to reroute a ton of players through more distant servers which will cost a ton. Is this losing us any money?”
“Well, sir, the players that failed to reincarnate have a total of $1,698 worth of gold saved up.”
“That’s paltry. This isn’t a problem that affects me. Ignore it.”
“Yes, sir,” Hector said. He left the president’s office thoroughly disappointed.
23
“We need a plan,” Daniel said. “All four of us should be leveling up as much as we can. For me, that means honing my Scout abilities. I’m going to go ahead of you all and Sneak around the forest to see what I can find. I’ll climb trees and peer out in the distance to see what I can learn. If I find any weak mobs, I’ll kill them for the XP and the loot drops.
“Sybil, you should be singing. Like nonstop singing. And killing things with that polearm of yours. Aim for spiders, there should be plenty of them here.
“Coral, help Sybil kill those spiders. Then squeeze the webbing out of their abdomens. When you’re not fighting, craft the web silk into something. Robes, belts, purses, I don’t care what.
“Sal, you’re pretty good about eating everything. Stick to things you know are edible. Hit the next level of Gourmand and get your stats up.
“When I find the cave, I’ll come back for you and lead you there. Sound like a plan?”
Everyone agreed. Daniel was pleased. Maybe he would make a good General one day.
He turned toward the forest and prowled among the trees, looking foremost for a cave entrance, but keeping an eye out for anything of value or interest. He tiptoed over dry fallen branches that would have snapped loudly under his feet. He avoided disturbing squirrels and other squeaky forest creatures. He stepped on rocks where he found them to avoid leaving footprints.
The forest canopy blocked most of the direct sunlight, casting the forest in a shroud of its own shadow. The trees were simple oaks and maples, many of them quite old. A few rotting logs scattered the ground, but Daniel didn’t see much wildlife. An occasional squirrel, maybe a rat, but nothing larger.
Up ahead though, he saw the boughs of a tree dip and snap back up, like a large creature had jumped from tree to tree. He crouched and stared in the distance, hoping to use his Surveil skill to find out what was up ahead. Ten seconds went by with no other movement. Twenty seconds. The forest would soon come into greater focus.
>> You’ve been hit! 264 Damage. [CRITICAL]
Daniel whipped around to find a small goblin had snuck up on him and stabbed him in the back. Catching Daniel unaware had provided the perfect opportunity to land a critical hit. Daniel unsheathed his short sword and lunged, piercing the goblin’s poorly made chainmail breastplate and delving his sword deep into the critter’s chest. The goblin howled, filling the tranquil forest with the sound of its pain. Daniel pulled his sword free as the goblin fell to the ground, dead.
Where there was one goblin, there were a hundred. Without his friends nearby, Daniel ran. He didn’t want to get caught by a patrol of goblins without backup. Especially not with some other monster in the trees overhead. He dodged past tree trunks until he had left the bloody goblin corpse far behind. Then he resumed his slow crawl through the forest, making sure to look behind as much as he looked forward.
Before long he came across another goblin. The short ugly creature had patches of brown warts growing from its pea-green skin. It had a pitiful little helmet atop its wide, flat head. The goblin pressed up against a tree, peering to the side. Daniel didn’t know what the goblin was hunting, but he knew this was the time to pay forward the backstabbing he had received earlier.
Daniel crept toward the goblin, his sw
ord gripped tightly in front of him. With his Sneak skill activated, he hoped to creep up right behind the ugly thing without being noticed. He got closer, and closer, until he could smell the rancid odor of unwashed goblin mere inches from the monster’s filthy body.
The goblin stared intently forward. Daniel wrapped his arms around the goblin’s head from both sides. One hand covered the creature’s mouth to stifle any screaming while the other hand slashed his blade across the goblin’s throat.